The abject failure of Turing's first prediction (of computer
success in playing the Imitation Game) confirms the aptness of the Imitation
Game test as a test of human level intelligence. It especially belies
fears that the test is too easy. At the same time, this failure disconfirms
expectations that human level artificial intelligence will be forthcoming any
time soon. On the other hand, the success of Turing's second prediction
(that acknowledgment of computer thought processes would be become commonplace)
in practice amply confirms the thought that computers think in some manner and
are possessed of some level of intelligence already. This lends
ever-growing support to the hypothesis that computers will think at a human
level eventually, despite the abject failure of Turing's first prediction.

Turing's Failed Prediction

In 1950 Alan Turing made two predictions. First and
most famously, he predicted

that in
about fifty years' time it will be possible to programme
computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the
imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70
per cent. chance of making the right identification
after five minutes of questioning. (Turing 1950, p. 442)

This prediction has failed abjectly. Current contestants
play the Imitation Game so ill that an average interrogator has a 100 percent
chance of making the right identification. By Turing's measure, in other
words, current contestants play with no measurable success. What this
says about the adequacy of the Turing test as a test of high-grade or
human-level artificial intelligence, I argue, is that it's about right.
What it means for AI itself is more equivocal and best assessed in the light of
the success of Turing's second prediction.

The Test

It's Not Too Easy

Some fear the Turing test is too easy -- that Turing test
passing would not suffice to warrant attribution of thought -- because

people are
easily fooled and are especially easily fooled into reading structure in chaos,
reading meaning into nonsense (Shieber 1994, p. 72);

and

it has
been known since ELIZA that a test based on fooling people is confoundingly simple to pass. (Shieber
1994a, p. 72)

ELIZAphobia, I call it.1 For those prone to ELIZAphobia
the moral of the abject failure of computers to fulfill Turing's prediction, I
believe, is that your fears are unfounded. Eager though we are to read
structure into chaos and meaning into nonsense, the experience of the Loebner
Prize competition -- not to mention the last fifty years -- attests that the unrestricted
Turing test is confoundingly hard.

I agree that if a program very much like ELIZA could pass,
that would be very good reason to doubt the sufficiency of the Turing
test.2 But the evidence of the Loebner prize competition
suggests that nothing like ELIZA has the remotest chance of passing the
unrestricted test. This supports the judgment that "if the Turing
test was passed, then one would certainly have very adequate grounds for
inductively inferring that the computer could think on the level of a normal,
living, adult human being" (Moor 1976, p. 251). The abject
failure of Turing's prediction together with our intuitive low estimates of the
intellectual capacities of the current generation of computer contestants
argues strongly for the empirical sufficiency of Turing's test.

It's Not Too Hard

As a test of intelligence or thought per se the test is
obviously too hard. Neither my cat nor my computer can play the Imitation
Game successfully. Nevertheless, I don't doubt that my cat exhibits
intelligence to some extent, and thinks in his own peculiar manner.
Likewise, my computer exhibits intelligence to some extent, and thinks in it's own peculiar manner. That's what I think.

Even as a test of human-level intelligence, the Turing test,
followed to the letter, seems too hard. Presumably something "could
think on the on the level of a normal, living, adult human being" (1976,
p. 251) without thinking in the manner of a normal adult human being, i.e.,
without sharing our cognitive style which all of it's
peculiarities. Thought or intelligence up to our level needn't share our
style. Turing himself observes,

The game may perhaps be criticized
on the ground that the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine. If
the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very
poor showing. He would be given away at once by slowness and inaccuracy in
arithmetic. (Turing 1950, p. 435)

Turing asks, "May not machines carry out something
which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a
man does?" and acknowledges "this objection is a very strong
one" (Turing 1950, p. 435). Still, so long as the computer
contestants' failings obviously bespeak cluelessness,
not just inhuman style, we need not be troubled by this objection.

It's About Right

"Machines take me by surprise with great
frequency," Turing writes, "because,
although I do a calculation, I do it in a hurried, slipshod fashion"
(Turing 1950, p. 450). To the attentive reader Turing's
presentation of the Imitation Game test may seem likewise slipshod.3
First he says that the machine contestant is supposed "to take the part of
A," the man, pretending to be a woman. Yet, a while later Turing asks,

Is it true that . . . [a computer]
can be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game, the
part of B [the confederate] being taken by a man? (Turing, p.442: my emphasis)

Yet a little further on, he observes,

The game (with the player B
omitted) is frequently used in practice under the name of viva voce to discover
whether some one really understands something or has "learnt it parrot
fashion." (Turing 1950, p. 446),

here, allowing the confederate, it
seems, to be inessential. Finally, Turing speaks of "playing . . .
the imitation game . . . against a blind man" (Turing 1950, p.
455). Finally, the question of what importance to attach to the averageness of the interrogator, the five minute time
limit, and the 70% rate of success mentioned in the prediction leaves room for
further doubts about the details of the test intended.

Rather than lecture Turing on the subject of his slipshod
ways in this connection, however, I commend them: when "speaking of such subjects and with such premises" it is best to
"be content . . . to indicate the truth roughly and in outline"
(Aristotle, Nich. Eth., Bk. I, Ch.
3); and in this spirit also should Turing's proposal be received, as a rough
approximation. So taken, the Turing test is apt. It tests the
contestant's ability "to use words, or put together other signs, as we do
in order to declare our thoughts to others" or "produce different
arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to
whatever is said in its presence" (Descartes 1637, p. 140). Such verbal
responsiveness is what we normally do use as a basis for assessing mental
competence, e.g., in determining to whom legal and moral entitlements
apply, and by whom moral and legal responsibilities are owed. This lends
powerful support to the thought that Turing-like tests are just right as tests
for human-level intelligence.

More generally, no test is sacrosanct; testing needs to be
flexible. If the time comes when computer contestants seem to be failing
mainly due to the inhuman style of their thought, rather than its low level, it
would hardly be contrary to the empirical spirit of Turing's proposal to alter
the test to try to control for this.4
Similarly, it is hardly contrary to (the spirit of) Turing's proposal if
we have to tweak the test to accommodate the needs of particular
subjects. This is why it's no objection to the Turing test to point out,
e.g., that the test as proposed would disqualify
nontypists and the illiterate. Where subjects'
disabilities are irrelevant to their intelligence (as these are), accommodating
such disabilities accords, generally, with the spirit of empirical testing and
with the "fair play" spirit of Turing's proposal, in particular.

This, incidentally, is why Hugh Loebner's
revision of the Turing test to require the contestant
to "respond intelligently to audio-visual input" (Loebner 1994, p.
82: original italics) is ill advised. It proposes to discriminate against
computers on the basis of their visual and auditory disabilities, contrary to
Turing's proposal, and contrary, as far as I can
see, to any sound spirit or principle whatever. If the test did need
strengthening -- as the abject failure of Turing's prediction argues it doesn't
-- it shouldn't be strengthened in this way. This audio-visual requirement
should be dropped. Alternately, if the time comes when Loebner would like
to ask his questions "about images and patterns" (Loebner 1994, p.
82), the rules should be amended to require inclusion of a blind person among
the confederates.

AI

Modest AI Covered

If AI is understood to be the thesis that computers can
think or be genuinely possessed of some intelligence, then the failure of
computers to pass the Turing test is inconsequential due to the test being
obviously too strong a disqualifying test for thought or intelligence per
se. Just as my cat's inability to pass the Turing test has no tendency to
undermine his claim to some manner of thought and some degree of intelligence,
the abject failure of computers to pass the Turing test provides no good reason
to deny them some manner of thought and degree of intelligence; even if Turing
test passing computers are very far "over the horizon"; and even,
perhaps, if the horizon "seems to be receding at an accelerating
rate," as Hubert Dreyfus (1979: 92) complains.

Since ensuing years have only to sharpened Dreyfus'
"receding horizon" complaint, if something like Turing test passing
capacity were required before attribution of any sort of thought or
intelligence were warranted, Dreyfusian arguments
such as the following would have considerable bite:

Turing test passing ability not being required for warranted
attribution of thought or intelligence per se, however, the Dreyfusian
argument does not go through against AI modestly understood; understood as
asserting "merely" that computers really do think, and are
intelligent in their own peculiar ways.

Oh the Humanity: Immodest AI Exposed

On the other hand, AI is more famously understood to be
advancing a more ambitious claim that a "computer could think on the level
of a normal, living, adult human being" (Moor 1976, p. 251). Such
immodest AI (as I call it) is vulnerable to the Dreyfusian
argument. It is vulnerable because the Turing test is a plausible
disqualifier for such human-level intelligence. In speaking of thought
"on the level of a normal, living, adult human being" we are talking
of something like moral agency or personhood; such that we should have to ask
ourselves in all moral seriousness the sorts of questions Robert Epstein
proposes we shall have to ask of a Loebner Prize winner. Questions like,

“Who should get the prize
money? . . . Should we give it the right to vote? Should it pay
taxes?” (Epstein 1992 as cited by Shieber 1994, p.
70)

We should have to ask such questions in all moral
seriousness because the ability "to use words or put together other
signs" so as to "give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever
is said" (Descartes 1642, p. 140) is what we ordinarily do take to qualify
normal adults and disqualify others for moral and legal responsibilities and
entitlements. The Turing test's credibility as a disqualifying test for
human-level intelligence -- in light of the abject failure of Turing's first
prediction -- leaves AI immodestly understood exposed to the Dreyfusian argument's bite. At the very least the
"probably none ever will" claim of the Dreyfusian
argument is confirmed by the abject failure of
Turing's prediction. It remains, of course, to quarrel as to what degree
and subject to what further considerations.

I believe that hope for
immodest AI remains viable, given further considerations. These derive
from the success -- less equivocal than it may seem -- of Turing's neglected
second prediction.

Turing's Second Prediction

[A]t the end of the century the use
of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will
be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
(Turing 1950, p. 442)

Naive AI

I submit that the success of this second prediction is less
equivocal than may seem. Consider the following exchange:

FREDERIC FRIEDEL: Not thinking but
that it was showing intelligent behavior. When Gary Kasparov plays against the
computer, he has the feeling that it is forming plans; it understands strategy;
it's trying to trick him; it's blocking his ideas, and then to tell him, now,
this has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just number crunching, seems
very semantic to him. [Friedel is Kasparov's
technical advisor.] (MacNeil & Lehrer 1997)

It certainly does seem very semantic. But it seems
equally "semantic" to deny Deep Blue's exercise of its intelligence
the name of thought. Naive judgments serving practically and predictively (as in trying to psych out Deep Blue's plans
and strategy) trump theoretical misgivings (reluctance to call such planning
and strategizing "thinking") in the absence of empirical and
scientific theoretic support for such misgivings. In lieu of such
support, modest AI prevails directly in virtue of arguments like this:

Every intelligent-seeming computer act underwrites an
argument of this naive argument type. And the more such behavior
computers display, and the more interconnectedly they
display it, the more hopeful things look for immodest AI, despite the abject
failure of Turing's first prediction. This is the main empirical reason
immodest AI remains a viable hope, despite that failure.5

Since the behaviors in question are intelligent seeming, the
opponent of these naive arguments needs to maintain that such behavior does not
evince true thought or genuine intelligence because some essential
characteristic is lacking. Thus the naive argument calls for a
theoretical rejoinder. To be sustained such a rejoinder must

1.scientifically support
its essence claim on behalf of the characteristic in question, and

2.empirically support
its claim that computers lack this characteristic.

I believe the prime candidates for the office of
disqualifying essential characteristic -- unity, intentionality, and phenomenal
consciousness -- all fail on these counts.

Unity First

The unity objection holds that it's necessary, for a thing
to really be thinking, for it to have enoughinterconnected intelligent-seeming
characteristics or abilities. The would-be disqualifying thought is that
Deep Blue and other candidate modest AIs lack
enough interconnected mental abilities for their intelligent-seeming
performances to be truly considered thought. To be sustained, the unity
objection requires some account of how many and which other
mental abilities a thing must have in order to think; and why. And
the rub -- as with the Turing test as a test of thought per se -- is how
to disqualify my computer without disqualifying my cat. In light of
computers' many actual intelligent-seeming capabilities and their
(theoretically almost unlimited) potential for acquiring more; and in light of
the somewhat limited capacities of my cat; I do not believe the unity objection
to modest AI is sustainable.6

Nevertheless, for expository purposes, I am going to imagine
the Unity objection to be sustained. Exit my cat. Reenter the
Turing test; and rejoin the issue of immodest AI that has occasioned so much
interest. I contend that intentionality and phenomenal consciousness
objections cannot be sustained even against immodest AI claims. They are
thereby shown to be unsustainable against modest AI in spades.7

The Imitation Game Revisited

Recall the original man-woman version of the game. In
this version, no matter how female-seeming the man's manner of conversation,
revelation of what's hidden overrides the conversational evidence; because
that's the essential thing; not the style and content of their conversation,
but the content of their jenes [sic.]. In the
same manner, the two objections now to be considered -- the phenomenal
consciousness and intentionality objections -- urge that no matter how
intelligent or thoughtful seeming the computer's conversation, revelation of
what's hidden in it overrides the conversational evidence; because that's the
essential thing: phenomenal consciousness or intentionality.

Phenomenal Consciousness

Phenomenal consciousness is "inward" experience,
or subjectivity, or possession of private conscious experiences or qualia. It's
that certain jenesais qua
but you don't know what it is; or, at least, you can't say. It's the
stuff that souls are made of; a spiritual concept, I think; and whereof one
cannot scientifically speak, thereof one must pass over, scientifically, in
silence. Since disqualification of a Turing test passer requires
scientific-theoretic and empirical support to be sustained, I submit the
phenomenal consciousness objection fails. Let me assemble a few reminders
why.

With regard to the scientific theoretic standing of
consciousness . . . for a very long time consciousness was regarded as the
foundational concept of psychology. Introspectionism
was the last gasp attempt to base psychology as an empirical science on such a
phenomenological foundation. Introspectionism
was a flop. The trouble was -- allowing verbal reports of consciousness
to go proxy for direct introspective observation, as one must in the case of
others' conscious experiences -- everyone disagreed in their verbal reports.
At present, I believe, no credible scientific psychological theory features
consciousness as a fundamental concept.8

The chief trouble with consciousness as a scientific concept
-- in a word -- is the subjectivity of it. Turing notes the impossibility
of observing and consequent difficulty of confirming it's presence in others in
suggesting "those who support the argument from consciousness" might
"be willing to accept our test" rather than "be forced into the
solipsist position" (Turing 1950, p. 447). Though some entertain
hopes of discovering the neurophysiological basis or computational basis of
phenomenal consciousness -- so as to be able to scientifically infer the
presence of the phenomenal consciousness we can't observe in others from such
neurophysiological or computational causes as we can -- such would-be solutions
to the other minds problem, even if successful, would only solve half the
problem; and not the half that most concerns us. They would provide
"sufficient but not necessary conditions for the correct ascription of
[phenomenal consciousness] to other beings" (Searle 1992, p. 76); but it's
the detection of the absence of qualia, or discovery of what's causally
necessary for phenomenal consciousness, that concerns us for purposes of
disqualifying Turing test passing computers. And there seems no
scientific or anywise empirical hope of establishing the absence of phenomenal
consciousness or qualia in anything . . . unless by telepathic scan. Even
then . . . perhaps the telepath is sensitive only to humanoid qualia.
Perhaps a Turing test passing computer would have qualia quite unlike ours, and
the telepath's failure to detect any phenomenal consciousness in the computer
might be due to our human telepath's insensitivity to such alien qualia, and
not to the machine's lacking qualia altogether.

I conclude there is no scientific reason to think phenomenal
consciousness is the true essence of thought; and if there were -- when faced
with a truly Turing test passing computer -- we would have no empirical grounds
to deny such a computer to be possessed of such phenomenal consciousness as its
conversation would suggest.

Intentionality: Why Robot?

I will not dispute that intentionality -- meaning or
aboutness -- is essential to thought; but scientific grounds for thinking a
Turing test passing computer would lack the requisite intentionality are slim
to nonexistent.

Views according to which intentionality -- meaning or
"aboutness" -- is supposed to boil down to consciousness, in addition
to facing the aforesaid troubles with consciousness, undertake the burden to
say how it boils down; which none can say. We can dismiss such
views immediately.

A more credible approach maintains that computers'
"symbol" processing is not sufficiently grounded in causal-perceptual
and causal-robotic interaction with things for its symbol processing to really
be about these things. On this view, the missing ingredient -- what we
have that computers lack -- are causal connections between the signs and the things
they signify. Put crudely, the difference between my meaningful belief that
cats are intelligent and a computer's meaningless "representation" of
this same information -- say by storing a Prolog clause that says
intelligent(X):-cat(X) -- is that my representation came to be, or could be,
elicited in me by the actual presence (the actual sights and sounds) of cats.
It is these perceptually mediated connections between my use of the English
word "cat" and actual cats that makes that
word signify those animals for me; and it is for want of such connections that
computer representations lack such signification for the computer (c.f. Hauser
1993).

I will not dispute the general causal story about reference
underlying this objection. I do, however, dispute the use of this story
to justify discrimination against would-be Turing test passing computers on the
basis of their sensory or motoric disabilities.
On any plausible telling of the causal story no extensive ability to apply
words to the world directly on the basis of sensory acquaintance or physical
manipulation is crucial. As Turing notes, "We need not be too
concerned about the legs, eyes, etc. The example of Miss Helen Keller
shows that education can take place provided communication in both directions
between teacher and pupil can take place" (Turing 1950, p. 456).9
My computer communicates with me -- and I with it -- through its touch pad and
LCD screen. That's why the figures Excel manipulates when it calculates
my students' grades are about my students' grades. The conversation of a Turing test passing computer would likewise be
about what it was discussing, for similar reasons.

Conclusion

In the light of the success of Turing's second prediction in
practice, I take modest AI to be a present reality: generally speaking,
computers really are possessed of the mental states and capacities our naive
assessments say. Deep Blue really considers chess positions and evaluates
possible continuations; my humble laptop really searches for -- and sometimes
finds -- files in storage and words in documents. If it asks like it
thinks, and answers like it thinks, and extemporizes like it thinks, it ain't necessarily thinking. Still, prima facie it
thinks; and you're warranted in saying and believing as much on the basis of
such evidence. In the case of ducks we know what sort of observable facts
would scientifically override the quacking, and waddling, and ducklike appearance, if it turns out to be a mechanical
duck. We know no such things in the case of a Deep Blue's forming plans
and understanding strategy; and we know no such things which -- if we were
faced with a Turing test passing computer -- would warrant withholding
attribution of human-level thought. Of course, by the time we are faced with
that eventuality -- if ever -- we may know more about thought. Then
again, what more we know may not be disqualifying. Though the test itself
-- like any empirical test -- is negotiable, there is presently no empirical or
theoretical reason to renegotiate.

Immodest AIs -- computers with
human-level thought -- are still very far over the horizon, I suspect. If
that horizon "seems to be receding at an accelerating rate" (Dreyfus
1979: 92), that is because it initially appeared, to Turing among others, to be
closer than it really was. Ironically, what I have been calling immodest
AI for the immodesty if it's aspirations suffers, more
than anything else, perhaps, from too modest an assessment of our own human
mental capacities. Nature has taken some four billion years to evolve
human intelligence from inanimate matter. Through us, she has taken some fifty
years to arrive at the current level of artificial intelligence. Wait, I say,
till next millennium!

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to James Moor for his encouragement and
inspiration. Thanks are also due to Ethan Disbrow,
Tanisha Fuller, Lark Haunert,
Anne Henningfeld, Holly Townsend, and Jeanette Watripont for their helpful comments and criticisms.

Notes

Shieber was addressing these
remarks to the restricted version of the test. Ironically despite
his general reservations about tests based on fooling people being confoundingly easy, Shieber
dismisses the unrestricted Turing test as impossibly hard and the Loebner
Prize competition as incredibly premature.

Pace Block 1981.

See Saygin, et al. (forthcoming)
for further discussion.

This might be helped somewhat by requiring cultural
diversity among querents and confederates.
Inclusion of "differently abled"
humans among the confederates and querents might
also help.

A hope buttressed, of course, by the theoretical
universality of these machines.

Descartes' (1637) advocacy of Turing test passing (roughly)
as a necessary condition for any intelligence whatsoever underwrites his
infamous denial of any mental capacity to any infrahuman animal at
all. Herein lies a cautionary tale.

If (evidence of) phenomenal consciousness or
robustly-robotically-grounded intentionality are
not justifiably held to be prerequisite for (warranted attribution of)
human-level intelligence, they certainly cannot be warrantedly
asserted to be prerequisite for (attribution of) of lesser varieties --
say sparrow-level or starfish-level intelligence.

Though many a crackpot theory does.

See Putnam's (1975) discussion of the elm/beech and
aluminum/molybdenum examples and the division of linguistic labor.
See also Landau and Gleitman's (1975) findings
concerning blind children's acquisition of seemingly vision-dependent
concepts.